In 1981 police found a woman's body: 45 years later she was identified as a missing millionaire
In the USA, after 45 years, the identity of a woman whose remains were found in a shallow grave in the mountainous area of Riverside County (California) was established. The deceased was 80-year-old multimillionaire Thelma Gaston, who disappeared in June 1981, writes People.
According to the Riverside County Sheriff’s Office, the woman’s body was found back in 1981 near Sugar Loaf Mountain, but due to severe decomposition, her identity could not be determined at that time.
After 45 years, following grant funding for re-investigating cold cases, experts applied genetic genealogy methods and DNA analysis, which allowed them to identify the deceased.
According to American media, before her disappearance, Gaston left a note on her house door in the Century City area stating that she went to look for her cat.
During her life, the woman earned a fortune of over $20 million by buying and reselling foreclosed real estate. After her disappearance, her partner Lawrence Remsen tried to seize her property: he attempted to withdraw about $100,000 from Gaston’s bank account and sell several of her real estate assets.
Investigators also established that the documents transferring the right to manage the woman’s property to him, as well as a letter supposedly stating that she "went out for some fun," were likely forged.
Remsen was arrested several months after Gaston’s disappearance when he tried to return to the US from Mexico. During the trial, he claimed he found the woman already dead and disposed of her body to seize the inheritance. Despite the body not being found at the time, he was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
The identification of the remains decades later definitively confirmed the victim’s identity and closed one of the oldest unsolved cases in the county.
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